I've been struggling as a writer as to whether the Sublight series should be a novel or a sitcom. Novels have a definite beginning, middle, and end. Sitcoms just keep putting the same characters into different situations, and never really allowing for much change in between.

Youtube must have picked up on my existential dread, because somewhere in my playlist this popped up:

Immediately followed by:

Let's focus on the Futurama... eh... clip? If you don't have 70 minutes to listen to the guy whinge, most of the criticisms he lays down center on times in the show where they never really developed the characters much. The only time Fry and Lela ever get a satisfying ending is when... well... the series is ending. And it ended several times.

I'm running across the same problem trying to get into watching Stargate. After having watched all of the Episodes of Star Trek. And Star Trek The Next Generation. And Voyager. And Deep Space 9. (I only made it through 2 seasons of Enterprise)

What is killing me is the fact that you really can't binge watch that style of show. It was meant to be a consequence free 60 minutes (45 if you cut the commercials) escape doled out in 1 week increments. A bit like a dessert. Yes, it's the same damn ice cream cone you have every day. But it's been 24 hours since your last one. You might get an occasional 2 or 3 part episode.

Then I remember the joy I had as a kid watching Robotech. GI Joe and Transformers, yeh, they were kind of great. But I would race home in 5th grade to catch Robotech. You couldn't miss an episode. It was so much different than any other TV show I had ever seen. Major Characters died. The setting evolved. Foes became allies, and allies became foes. The characters who started the show were very different as they were worn down by the end. Rick evolved from a hippie pacifist to a hardened fighter ace. Lisa started off a no-nonsense officer, and evolved into a humanist. The only major characters who really didn't evolve were Khyron and Minmei. And they were pretty tragic characters.

I guess where I'm going with all of this is that I'm kind of envisioning that instead of writing Sublight as an open-ended series, each of the books should be stand-alone. As far as length, I think each "Season" should be about 7 episodes of about 60 minutes each.